Constant Risk

by Janie Crouch

  “She’ll be hysterical one hour then much better the next, thank God.” Penelope rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I’ve watched these clips over a hundred times. Whit has also. But we haven’t found anything that helps at all.”

  “Just makes me pretty damn furious,” Whitaker said.

  Jeremy walked over to them. “We’re up in less than three minutes, boss.”

  Penelope nodded. “Any progress over there?”

  “Bree isn’t saying very much, but she seems to know her stuff, which isn’t surprising, given who she is. This will be the first time she’s seeing what’s happening behind the scenes as the footage comes in. No offense, but I don’t think she’ll be quite so quick to say no such thing as impossible after she really understands what’s going on.”

  “Give her a chance,” Penelope said.

  Jeremy shrugged. “At this point I’m willing to give anybody a chance. I just don’t want us putting all our eggs in one basket. Plus, she’s not making any friends over there.”

  “Why? What happened?” Penelope asked, as they all stood.

  “One of the first things she did was set up a program so it records what’s happening on everyone’s computer screen. Bree said she wanted to be able to look over what everyone was doing in case they missed anything.”

  Whitaker looked over at Tanner and they both winced. People who didn’t know Bree wouldn’t understand the kindness and gentleness that resided under her sometimes-abrupt exterior. Her actions would seem like she thought herself superior to everyone else.

  They walked over to the monitor screens to prepare for the next transmission. Bree had made herself a little command center and was typing on one keyboard as her eyes darted back and forth between three screens.

  Tanner walked over to stand right behind her.

  “I don’t have anything yet,” she said without looking at him. “There’s something weird going on that I haven’t been able to put my finger on.”

  He rubbed the back of her shoulders. “Nobody expected you to come in and solve this in an hour. Let’s give it a little more time.”

  Her disgusted grunt told him she had in fact expected to be able to solve this in an hour.

  Just a few seconds later, the countdown clock began to beep. Bree didn’t even look up from her monitor.

  The crying, sounding even more eerie because of the voice modulator, came through just a split second before the video did. The video was exactly the same as all the others. Nothing could be seen but the coffin-sized box containing the woman from the neck down. She was struggling against the metal cuffs that attached her wrists and ankles to the sides.

  Everyone’s attention was riveted to the screens in front of them, except Bree.

  Even when the woman was sobbing and begging to be freed—this was obviously not one of her good moments—Bree didn’t look up from what she was doing. Besides the crying, Bree’s fingers on the keyboard were the only thing that could be heard.

  Tanner understood Bree well enough to know what was going on. She knew the victim was not the key to finding the location to where she was being kept. The key was in figuring out the details of the transmission.

  But to everybody else it looked like Bree didn’t care at all about the suffering of this poor woman. Like Bree couldn’t be bothered to stop typing for the seconds the transmission would last and at least acknowledge the woman’s misery.

  The transmission ended as suddenly as it began. Bree’s hands never stopped moving on the keyboard. Nearly everyone in the room was staring at her, the noise from her fingers sounding throughout the room. Tanner was glad Bree was caught in her own world and had no comprehension of what was going on around her.

  “Do you mind if we play it again, Bree?” Penelope finally asked.

  “Would hate to disrupt you in any way,” Jeremy muttered.

  Bree didn’t even look up. “That’s fine. The victim is irrelevant.”

  Even Tanner had to wince a little at that one. Jeremy rolled his eyes and walked over to one of the computers and set the footage to play again.

  “Okay, people, what do we see?” Penelope asked when it was done.

  “She was already crying before the camera turned on. It was one of the times when she seemed not to be aware of the transmission at all,” Whitaker said.

  “All right, so it’s one of her bad hours. Maybe she’s tired. Maybe he hurt her.” Penelope had them play the footage again.

  There were so many things that could be happening to the poor woman to make her hysterical.

  Hearing the modulated crying caused Tanner to look more closely at the screen. He walked over and stood next to Whitaker. “Your friend Shelby and the other victim.”

  “Kelly Quinn,” Whitaker filled in for him.

  “You didn’t find any links between them?”

  “Nothing of any significance.”

  “Did you check where they shop for clothes? They were both similar build, right? I know we don’t have great perspective from this footage, but looking at this new woman, she could possibly be about the same size also. Relatively petite. Slender.”

  “Definitely worth a try.” Whitaker called Penelope over and she agreed it was worth redoubling their efforts to see if it led anywhere, and immediately got someone on it.

  They played the footage again and Tanner stepped closer to the screens. The crying was so much more jarring with a voice regulator distorting it.

  The killer wasn’t letting them see her face and wasn’t letting them hear her real voice.

  Why?

  Tanner looked over at Whitaker and Penelope. “You guys got any local celebrities missing or anything?”

  Penelope raised an eyebrow. “Not that I’ve heard. Why?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Just seems like an awful lot of work to use a voice modulator when we can’t see the victim’s face anyway. Leads me to think there might be something about her voice that’s unique. Something we’d recognize right off if we could see or hear her clearly.”

  Whitaker muttered a curse. “You’re right. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that.”

  Tanner slapped him on the shoulder. “Trying to figure out who framed me for murder gave me a better perspective on thinking outside the box.”

  Whitaker had the good grace to look sheepish, since he’d been the person most convinced Tanner was guilty. “I’m glad something good came out of that.”

  Penelope played the clip again. “Damn it. I think you’re right, Tanner. I haven’t heard anything about a well-known missing person, but we’ll put some feelers out immediately. But knowing the victim still isn’t going to help us get to her. We need the location.”

  “Give Bree time,” he told her.

  * * *

  BREE WORKED ALL night long on the tracking without stopping.

  Whitaker and another one of the detectives on the case, Leon Goulding, an African American man in his late twenties who’d joined the Dallas PD after Whitaker left, took Tanner to show him where the first two victims had been found.

  None of them had found anything useful in either the woods or the empty restaurant, but at least it had given Tanner a frame of reference.

  Then they’d taken him to the evidence room and shown him the boxes the dead women had been found in—identical to the one the woman from the footage was currently trapped in. The boxes were lying on a table side by side.

  “They’re made of low-density polyethylene,” Leon said as Tanner walked around looking at them. “Basically the same thing trash cans are made from.”

  Tanner nodded. “So they definitely wouldn’t have any problem holding water.”

  Whitaker was studying the boxes too. “That’s correct. We even filled one of them to capacity to double-check. The seams are reinforced with an acrylic binder.”

  Tanner took a cl
oser look. “Like an aquarium.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Leon said. “These boxes are the same size down to the millimeter, and as best we can tell, are pretty damn close to the size of the box in the footage.”

  Tanner looked at the length of them. “There’s no way an average-sized man could fit in one of those. I think the killer might be choosing his victims based solely on their size.”

  Whitaker nodded. “Body shape and size was the only thing we’ve been able to find in common between Shelby and Kelly Quinn.”

  Tanner rubbed the back of his neck walking around the table. “He’s building a new box for each victim rather than reusing the one he has.”

  “What does that mean?” Leon asked.

  “I think the killer wants to be able to know the exact minute the victim will drown. He wants to control everything about her death. Control is his MO, and he’s left nothing to chance.”

  The footage continued to arrive at the top of every hour all night also.

  They went through twelve cycles, some where the woman was relatively calm, some where she was hysterical. Then, most disturbing, some when she began to realize the water dripping so slowly on her was eventually going to be what killed her.

  She didn’t talk about that realization in every transmission, but when she did, it was heartbreaking. She wasn’t hysterical, wasn’t crying.

  Just a whispered question. “The water. How long will it take before it fills up?” Like she was trying to work it out in her mind.

  She’d mentioned the water three times in the last twelve hours. Almost like she was resigning herself to her fate. That was the last thing they wanted. The woman giving up hope would kill her quicker than anything.

  Tanner had even caught Bree watching that footage with a frown—if Bree was stopping what she was doing to watch, that definitely meant it was pretty bad.

  Somebody played the last clip again. Tanner couldn’t help but flinch as the woman talked about the water in her stoic voice.

  Penelope came and stood next to him, offering him a cup of coffee. “Any idea how long before Bree might possibly have an update?”

  “As soon as she knows something definitive, Bree will say. Asking her for updates now just slows her down.” He gestured toward the screen. “I know this feels pretty bleak, but we should have at least another thirty-six hours before that damn thing fills with water, right?”

  “Actually, drowning is the best-case scenario. We consulted with a medical professional and unless that water temperature is carefully regulated she could die of hypothermia before she drowns.”

  Tanner let out a curse. “So how long do we have?”

  “Doc says she’s not showing any signs of hypothermia yet from what he can tell in the latest footage, so that’s good. But as the water gets deeper...”

  Tanner glanced over at Bree. “I can ask her for an update, but I promise she’s working as hard as she can. Bree only has one speed when it comes to this sort of thing, and believe me, it’s faster than you and I and probably everyone else in this room put together. As soon as she’s got something she’ll let us know.”

  Penelope looked as if she was about to argue the point when Bree called out behind him.

  “I’ve got something!”

  Everyone got quiet. Tanner just smiled.

  Chapter Seven

  The bastard was smart, Bree would give him that. She walked toward Tanner, frowning when she saw him talking to the beautiful blonde woman whose name she couldn’t remember, even though she’d said it when they’d met, however many hours ago. The detective in charge.

  Blondie looked excited. “You located the victim?”

  Bree shook her head. “Not yet.”

  She looked around and realized everyone was staring at her and grimaced. She never liked to be the center of attention. She felt better when Tanner slipped his arm around her.

  Talking to Tanner was easier, so Bree focused on him. “The guy is using multiple VPNs and proxy servers to hide the actual location of where he’s streaming from. Bouncing it around all over the place but keeping it local enough that I wouldn’t question it or eliminate it completely.”

  Jeremy walked over, nodding. “That’s what I was trying to tell you from the beginning.”

  Bree looked over at him. “And you were right. There’s no way to track the killer that way.”

  “Then what exactly is your breakthrough?” Blondie asked.

  “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

  “Penelope.” She arched an eyebrow. “I am the detective in charge of the case.”

  Bree nodded. “Right. Penelope. I know. I’m sorry, I’m not very good with names. It was actually the victim herself who got me thinking in the right direction.”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think you were even aware there was a victim given how little you paid attention to her.”

  Bree winced.

  “Enough, Jeremy,” Whitaker said from the conference table.

  Tanner’s arm tightened around her, but Jeremy was right. Bree hadn’t been even remotely as focused on the victim as she had been the computer side of things. She could’ve at least been a little more sympathetic.

  “You’re doing fine,” Tanner whispered in her ear. “Everybody here has a job, and yours was to focus on the transmissions.”

  Everybody else had a job also, and yet had somehow managed to be sympathetic to the plight of the woman. Everyone except Bree. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes. “Right. Well, the woman started talking about the water.”

  “And?” Penelope said. “You got something from that?”

  “My brain just picked out that she seemed to be talking about it every fourth set of footage.”

  Penelope looked at Whitaker and then over at Tanner. “Is that right?”

  Jeremy pulled up the footage and played the last twelve transmissions.

  “I’ll be damned,” Penelope muttered. “She does talk about the water every fourth one. Do you think she’s trying to signal us?”

  Bree shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea what she’s doing. I can’t even imagine what goes through someone’s mind if they’re trapped like that. The pattern of it just got me thinking in a different way.”

  “So, her mentioning the water didn’t have anything to do with whatever it is you’ve come up with?” Whitaker asked.

  Bree shook her head. “No, not at all. It just got me started on looking for patterns, rather than taking all the footage holistically.”

  Penelope rubbed her hand over her eyes. “Can somebody please tell me what she’s talking about?”

  They didn’t understand. Bree turned to Tanner instead. “I found a fractal pattern in the transmissions.”

  He probably didn’t understand either, but at least Tanner nodded. “How does that help us?”

  “It means that every fourth time there’s something a little bit different with how the killer is transmitting. Those times it’s a self-similar pattern with expanding symmetry.”

  Penelope snapped to attention. “Is the woman trying to tell us that by talking about the water.”

  Bree shook her head. “No. There’s no way she could know about it. I thought the transmissions were random, but not all of them are. This is something he overlooked, or thought we wouldn’t discover.”

  “Okay,” Tanner said. “How does it help us?”

  “I can use it to catch him. I don’t have to track him, just find the system using the fractal pattern. It’s very specific. But I can only do it every fourth transmission, and it has to be while the transmission is live.”

  “But now you know what you’re looking for,” Tanner said.

  She reached up and squeezed his bicep. He understood. Tanner always understood. “Yes. Now that I know what it is, it’s just a matter of time. I might not be able to
get you to the actual room, but I’ll be able to get you pretty damn close.”

  Whitaker walked over and squeezed her shoulder. “You get us close, we’ll do the rest.”

  “I can’t do anything for another three hours. That’s when the next transmission that’s using the fractal pattern will go live.”

  “How many more footage segments do you need?” Tanner asked.

  “The next one will get us close, but I can’t guarantee exactly how close. We’ll need to be ready to move to where that one leads. Then I’ll need at least one more after that to pinpoint.”

  “There’s nothing you can do with any of the other footage segments? No clues there?” Penelope asked. “You’re saying we’re at least seven hours and possibly eleven or more before we have actionable intel?”

  Bree shrugged. “Yes. I can’t work any faster than the pattern he submits on.”

  Penelope shook her head. “That’s too long. The victim might not even be alive at that point.”

  Bree blinked a few times and looked over at Tanner. “I haven’t worked out the exact math in my head, but it seems like she should have at least thirty-six more hours before the water covers her. Is my math off?”

  His arm slipped back around her waist. “That’s correct, but medical experts are concerned about hypothermia.”

  “Unless that water is temperature controlled, she could die,” Whitaker said.

  What was Bree supposed to do? She couldn’t magically make the pattern work more quickly. “I’m sorry. This anomaly in how the footage is being transmitted is only occurring every fourth time. I can’t change that or speed it up.”

  “If he made an error in whatever he did with every fourth set of footage, maybe he made an error somewhere else,” Penelope said. “We just need to find it. And we need to do it now.”

  Translation: Bree needed to find it.

  Bree nodded. “Let me write the pattern recognition program I’ll need to trace him when the next flawed transmission comes in. Then I’ll do my best to see if I can find any mistakes in the other transmissions.”